‘We would be remiss if we didn’t take the opportunity’
Fairfield neighbors cite 35-year-old ordinance in effort to preserve Catamount Road
FAIRFIELD — Catamount Road in Fairfield's Greenfield Hill neighborhood features the kind of wooded lots bordered by stone walls that seem to say, “New England.”
Local residents fear that historic look could become history though, due to development in the area. To prevent that, a group of neighbors have resurrected a town ordinance dating back to the 1980s with a petition for Fairfield to grant it special zoning protection as a “scenic road.”
For longtime Fairfield resident Zohrab Kouzoukian, the designation is about playing it safe. When he learned about the ordinance, he decided to take matters into his own hands, collecting 59 signatures up and down the street for his petition.
“Having lived on the street for over 50 years, I'd like to keep it the same way,” Kouzoukian said.
Any project that would alter a scenic road requires zoning approval before it can move forward, according to Fairfield's scenic road ordinance, which the town adopted in 1989. The ordinance states roadwork that would straighten, widen or pave a road or remove either stone walls or mature trees would be subject to review by the Town Plan and Zoning Commission — a process that Planning Director Jim Wendt said otherwise wouldn't exist.
“If it's not so designated, if there was a paving project or a road improvement — ‘Hey, we need to do some drainage here ... We're going to straighten out this curve, and maybe when we repave the road, we're going to widen it by a couple of feet' — a regular town road doesn't require approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission for the Public Works Department to make such an improvement.”
In the case of a scenic road, the commission has the right to block a public works project from happening, although Wendt said he cannot recall an instance when the body faced such a decision. In the case of Catamount Road, town officials don't seem to have had their sights set on any major undertakings.
“We've got feedback from our Public Works Department that says there's really nothing that they have on the drawing board that would be stymied by such a designation,” Wendt said.
Scenic roads must fulfill one of six criteria: they must be unpaved; border mature trees or stone walls; stretch no more than 20 feet wide; offer scenic views; blend with the surrounding landscape or either cross or run alongside a brook, stream, pond or lake. Kouzoukian said Catamount Road checks five of those boxes, with scenic views, aged trees, stone walls, brooks, streams, a width within 20 feet and a natural blend into the surrounding environment.
“We would be remiss if
we didn't take the opportunity,” he said.
Kouzoukian said although Catamount Road is likely too narrow to accommodate any major public works project, scenic road protection is a necessary safeguard against mere potential.
“Once we get that designation, the town is sort of limited in what they can do on this road,” Kouzoukian said. “While I'm saying I don't foresee any changes happening, who knows? Down the road they might come back and say, ‘Yeah, we want to do XYZ.' But having it designated as scenic
provides us with some level of protection.”
Town records show Fairfield recognizes 27 scenic roads across town, mostly concentrated in Greenfield Hill with some other locations in Southport, Mill Plain and Hoyden's Hill. Wendt said neighbors sent the town a “flurry” of scenic road petitions shortly after the scenic road ordinance went into effect, but officials had not received any since at least 2017 until the Catamount Road petition.
Kouzoukian said he learned about the ordinance years ago when a few other nearby roads attained the status, and after connecting with neighbors for Fairfield's first scenic road petition in years, they were all on board.
He filed the petition to the zoning commission in December, and hopes to schedule a public hearing for the scenic road designation in February before members would vote on the measure at a subsequent meeting. Wendt said the scenic road ordinance does not regulate any development on private property — only if it requires physical work on the road.
But as the town continues to search for ways to slow down motor vehicles and protect its rural assets, he said town department heads support the push from neighbors to keep Catamount Road as it's always been.
“If we keep making roads wider and straighter the faster the cars will be driving,” George Kaczegowicz, Fairfield's former general manager of streets and highways, said in an email to Wendt about Catamount Road. “We need to let people see what Fairfield used to be like, not what we can change it into.”